The main pillar of Saddam’s power–his family–was cracking. “It leaves a huge hole in the regime,” says a Western diplomat in Amman who watches Iraq closely. “This is the most dramatic development since the gulfwar–and the most threatening one to Saddam.” But does Hussein Kamel really command enough authority in Iraq to pull off a coup? And if so, why didn’t he do it while he was still in the country, instead of running away to Jordan? “Hussein Kamel is not someone Iraqi troops wake up thinking about,” said one Clinton adviser. But Saddam Hussein now does. Before Hussein Kamel’s public call for his overthrow, the Iraqi dictator dispatched a delegation to Jordan, led by his son Uday, to woo the fugitives back to Baghdad. But Uday was given a polite brushoff at King Hussein’s palace; his request to see the defectors was turned down.
As a top honcho in Saddam’s regime, Hussein Kamel says it was easy to drive out of the country in a convoy of armored cars, and no guards along the way dared to question him. In the West, he will find a more skeptical audience. Other exiled opponents of Saddam are already complaining that Hussein Kamel has too much blood on his hands to lead a new government. (Hussein Kamel responded to this in his press conference by arguing, implausibly, that he was a “builder” of Iraq and not responsible for the regime’s repressiveness.) But a defector of his stature will inevitably become the focus of any game plan of Western officials aiming to depose Saddam. “What options do they have?” says Jawad Anani, a Jordanian senator and former minister. “Even if you don’t want him in the driver’s seat eventually, you can’t afford to break his wings.”
Clinton administration officials were thrilled by the defections–and hoping for a windfall of intelligence. “These guys are the inner core,” says a White House official. “They are potentially filled with dynamite revelations.” Hussein Kamel has been the effective head of the Iraqi military-industrial complex since 1987, and could provide valuable information to U.N. investigators trying to piece together what remains of Iraq’s chemical- and biological-weapons programs. “He knows more than anyone else about what they’ve got, how they got it, what they’ve hidden from the U.N. and how they did that,” says a Pentagon Iraq watcher. Beyond the specific questions, the administration is interested in the power relationships. “His insights into how the system works are crucial,” says a Pentagon official. But will he spill the goodies? Hussein Kamel denied that he had any contacts to date with American officials, and said, “We will not reveal any secrets about Iraq unless it’s in the interest of Iraq.”
Clinton credited his tough sanctions policy for the Saddam family meltdown. “What these defections demonstrate is just how difficult things are within Iraq now, and how out of touch Sad-dam Hussein has become,” he said. Ordinary Iraqis are overwhelmed by a humanitarian crisis that has effectively wiped out the middle class. In 1004 alone, food prices jumped by 616 percent. Iraqi government intrigue has reached unprecedented levels. Saddam has safeguarded his own position by regularly shuffling senior officers, ensuring that no one can build up an independent power base. In May, he dismissed his half-brother Watban Ibrahim Hassan from the critical post of interior minister. Later he demoted a trusted cousin from his post as defense minister. Any hint of disloyalty is dealt with ruthlessly. Last spring, after a supposed coup plot, Saddam’s henchmen delivered the mutilated corpse of a general to his family. “This regime starts to crumble when people feel it is crumbling,” says Amatzia Baram, a leading Israeli expert on Iraqi politics. “This doesn’t mean there will immediately be a coup d’etat . . . But it could be a watershed.”
Saddam will be hard pressed to retaliate against his opponents this time. Sanctions have blocked air travel to Iraq, and Jordan is a vital lifeline to the outside world. In a telephone conversation with King Hussein, President Clinton promised to protect Jordan in ease of any Iraqi aggression, and later publicly praised the king’s stance as “an act of real courage.” After supporting Saddam during the gulf war, Jordan had cool relations with Washington and even cooler ones with the rich gulf states. The peace treaty with Israel was a turning point. Jordan’s king “has been working for a new posture,” says Radwan Abdullah, a Jordanian political scientist. “He doesn’t want to bet on the wrong horse again.” Harboring the Iraqi defectors could help warm things up even more. This week, Washington has scheduled joint exercises between U.S. Marines and the Jordanian Navy. With this new tumult in the region, the Pentagon has also moved the cruiser Mississippi and the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt from the western to the eastern Mediterranean, closer to the Persian Gulf.
American officials were hesitant to fore-east Saddam’s imminent demise; that prediction has been made too often before to be credible. He is clearly a tough man to bring down. Now he will have to rely even more heavily on his two sons, among the only close family left in his inner circle, to ensure his survival. They know that if Dad goes, so do they.
